Nicknamed "The Gray Lady",[12] the Times has long been regarded within the industry as a national "newspaper of record".[13] The paper's motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print", appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. Editorially, the paper is generally regarded as liberal.[14][15]

Since the mid-1970s, The New York Times has greatly expanded its layout and organization, adding special weekly sections on various topics supplementing the regular news, editorials, sports, and features. Since 2008,[16] the Times has been organized into the following sections: News, Editorials/Opinions-Columns/Op-Ed, New York (metropolitan), Business, Sports of The Times, Arts, Science, Styles, Home, Travel, and other features.[17] On Sunday, the Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review (formerly the Week in Review),[18]The New York Times Book Review,[19]The New York Times Magazine[20] and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.[21] The Times stayed with the broadsheet full-page set-up and an eight-column format for several years after most papers switched to six,[22] and was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography, especially on the front page.[23]

History

Origins

The New York Times was founded as the New-York Daily Times on September 18, 1851.[a] Founded by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones, the Times was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company.[25] Early investors in the company included Edwin B. Morgan,[26]Christopher Morgan,[27] and Edward B. Wesley.[28] Sold for a penny (equivalent to 30 cents today), the inaugural edition attempted to address various speculations on its purpose and positions that preceded its release:[29]

We shall be Conservative, in all cases where we think Conservatism essential to the public good;—and we shall be Radical in everything which may seem to us to require radical treatment and radical reform. We do not believe that everything in Society is either exactly right or exactly wrong;—what is good we desire to preserve and improve;—what is evil, to exterminate, or reform.

In 1852, the newspaper started a western division, The Times of California, which arrived whenever a mail boat from New York docked in California. However, the effort failed once local California newspapers came into prominence.[30]

On September 14, 1857, the newspaper officially shortened its name to The New-York Times. (The hyphen in the city name was dropped on December 1, 1896.)[31] On April 21, 1861, The New York Times began publishing a Sunday edition to offer daily coverage of the Civil War. One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials in the Times alone.[32]

The newspaper's influence grew in 1870 and 1871, when it published a series of exposés on William Tweed, leader of the city's Democratic Party—popularly known as "Tammany Hall" (from its early 19th century meeting headquarters)—that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's City Hall.[35] Tweed had offered The New York Times five million dollars (equivalent to more than 100 million dollars today) to not publish the story.[26]

In the 1880s, The New York Times gradually transitioned from supporting Republican Party candidates in its editorials to becoming more politically independent and analytical.[36] In 1884, the paper supported DemocratGrover Cleveland (former Mayor of Buffalo and Governor of New York State) in his first presidential campaign.[37] While this move cost The New York Times a portion of its readership among its more progressive and Republican readers (revenue declined from $188,000 to $56,000 from 1883-1884), the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years.[38]

Ochs era

After George Jones died in 1891, Charles Ransom Miller and other New York Times editors raised $1million dollars to buy the Times, printing it under the New York Times Publishing Company.[39][40] However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893,[38] and by 1896, the newspaper had a circulation of less than 9,000, and was losing $1,000 a day. That year, Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the Chattanooga Times, gained a controlling interest in the company for $75,000.[41]

The Pentagon Papers

In 1971, the Pentagon Papers, a secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1967, were given ("leaked") to Neil Sheehan of The New York Times by former State Department official Daniel Ellsberg, with his friend Anthony Russo assisting in copying them. The New York Times began publishing excerpts as a series of articles on June 13. Controversy and lawsuits followed. The papers revealed, among other things, that the government had deliberately expanded its role in the war by conducting air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the public was told about the actions, all while President Lyndon B. Johnson had been promising not to expand the war. The document increased the credibility gap for the U.S. government, and hurt efforts by the Nixon administration to fight the ongoing war.[65]

When The New York Times began publishing its series, President Richard Nixon became incensed. His words to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger included "People have gotta be put to the torch for this sort of thing..." and "Let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail."[66] After failing to get The New York Times to stop publishing, Attorney GeneralJohn Mitchell and President Nixon obtained a federal court injunction that The New York Times cease publication of excerpts. The newspaper appealed and the case began working through the court system. On June 18, 1971, The Washington Post began publishing its own series. Ben Bagdikian, a Post editor, had obtained portions of the papers from Ellsberg. That day the Post received a call from the Assistant Attorney General, William Rehnquist, asking them to stop publishing. When the Post refused, the U.S. Justice Department sought another injunction. The U.S. District court judge refused, and the government appealed. On June 26, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take both cases, merging them into New York Times Co. v. United States, 403U.S.713 (1971). On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court held in a 6–3 decision that the injunctions were unconstitutional prior restraints and that the government had not met the burden of proof required. The justices wrote nine separate opinions, disagreeing on significant substantive issues. While it was generally seen as a victory for those who claim the First Amendment enshrines an absolute right to free speech, many felt it a lukewarm victory, offering little protection for future publishers when claims of national security were at stake.[65]

1970s and 1980s

In the 1970s, the paper introduced a number of new lifestyle sections including Weekend and Home, with the aim of attracting more advertisers and readers. Many criticized the move for betraying the paper's mission.[67]

On September 7, 1976, the paper switched from an eight-column format to a six-column format. The overall page width stayed the same, with each column becoming wider.[22] On September 14, 1987, the Times printed the heaviest ever newspaper, at over 12 pounds (5.4 kg) and 1,612 pages.[68]

1990s and 2000s

In 1992, "Punch" Sulzberger stepped down as publisher; his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., succeeded him, first as publisher,[69] and then as Chairman of the Board in 1997.[70] The Times was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography, with the first color photograph on the front page appearing on October 16, 1997.[23]

Digital era

The New York Times switched to a digital production process sometime before 1980, but only began preserving the resulting digital text that year.[74]

In September 2008, The New York Times announced that it would be combining certain sections effective October 6, 2008, in editions printed in the New York metropolitan area. The changes folded the Metro Section into the main International / National news section and combined Sports and Business (except Saturday through Monday, when Sports is still printed as a standalone section). This change also included having the name of the Metro section be called New York outside of the Tri-State Area. The presses used by The New York Times allow four sections to be printed simultaneously; as the paper had included more than four sections all days except Saturday, the sections had to be printed separately in an early press run and collated together. The changes will allow The New York Times to print in four sections Monday through Wednesday, in addition to Saturday. The New York Times' announcement stated that the number of news pages and employee positions will remain unchanged, with the paper realizing cost savings by cutting overtime expenses.[16]

In 2009, the newspaper began production of local inserts in regions outside of the New York area. Beginning October 16, 2009, a two-page "Bay Area" insert was added to copies of the Northern California edition on Fridays and Sundays. The newspaper commenced production of a similar Friday and Sunday insert to the Chicago edition on November 20, 2009. The inserts consist of local news, policy, sports, and culture pieces, usually supported by local advertisements.

Following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million.[75]

In August 2007, the paper reduced the physical size of its print edition, cutting the page width from 13.5 inches (34 cm) to a 12 inches (30 cm). This followed similar moves by a roster of other newspapers in the previous ten years, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The move resulted in a 5% reduction in news space, but (in an era of dwindling circulation and significant advertising revenue losses) also saved about $12million a year.[76][77][78][79]

Because of its steadily declining sales attributed to the rise of online alternative media and social media, the newspaper has been going through a downsizing for several years, offering buyouts to workers and cutting expenses,[80] in common with a general trend among print news media.[81]

In December 2012, the Times published "Snow Fall", a six-part article about the 2012 Tunnel Creek avalanche which integrated videos, photos, and interactive graphics and was hailed as a watershed moment for online journalism.[82][83]

In October 2018, the Times published a 14,218-word investigation into Donald Trump's "self-made" fortune and alleged tax fraud, an 18-month project based on examination of 100,000 pages of documents. The lengthy article ran as an eight-page feature in the print edition and also was adapted into a shortened 2,500 word listicle featuring its key takeaways.[85] After the midweek front-page story, the Times also republished the piece as a 12-page "special report" section in the Sunday paper.[86] During the lengthy investigation, Showtime cameras followed the Times' three investigative reporters for a half-hour documentary called The Family Business: Trump and Taxes, which aired the following Sunday.[87][88][89] The report won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.[90]

In May 2019 the New York Times announced that it would present a television news program based on news from its individual reporters stationed around the world and that it would premiere on FX and Hulu.[91]

Headquarters building

The newspaper's first building was located at 113 Nassau Street in New York City. In 1854, it moved to 138 Nassau Street, and in 1858 to 41 Park Row, making it the first newspaper in New York City housed in a building built specifically for its use.[92]

The newspaper moved its headquarters to the Times Tower, located at 1475 Broadway in 1904,[93] in an area called Longacre Square, that was later renamed Times Square in honor of the newspaper.[94] The top of the building – now known as One Times Square – is the site of the New Year's Eve tradition of lowering a lighted ball, which was started by the paper.[95] The building is also notable for its electronic news ticker – popularly known as "The Zipper" – where headlines crawl around the outside of the building.[96] It is still in use, but has been operated by Dow Jones & Company since 1995.[97] After nine years in its Times Square tower the newspaper had an annex built at 229 West 43rd Street.[98] After several expansions, the 43rd Street building became the newspaper's main headquarters in 1960 and the Times Tower on Broadway was sold the following year.[99] It served as the newspaper's main printing plant until 1997, when the newspaper opened a state-of-the-art printing plant in the College Point section of the borough of Queens.[100]

Discrimination in employment

Discriminatory practices restricting women in editorial positions were previously employed by the paper. The newspaper's first general woman reporter was Jane Grant, who described her experience afterwards. She wrote, "In the beginning I was charged not to reveal the fact that a female had been hired". Other reporters nicknamed her Fluff and she was subjected to considerable hazing. Because of her gender, promotions were out of the question, according to the then-managing editor. She was there for fifteen years, interrupted by World War I.[103]

In 1935, Anne McCormick wrote to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, "I hope you won't expect me to revert to 'woman's-point-of-view' stuff."[104] Later, she interviewed major political leaders and appears to have had easier access than her colleagues did. Even those who witnessed her in action were unable to explain how she got the interviews she did.[105]Clifton Daniel said, "[After World War II,] I'm sure Adenauer called her up and invited her to lunch. She never had to grovel for an appointment."[106] Covering world leaders' speeches after World War II at the National Press Club was limited to men by a Club rule. When women were eventually allowed in to hear the speeches, they still were not allowed to ask the speakers questions, although men were allowed and did ask, even though some of the women had won Pulitzer Prizes for prior work.[107]Times reporter Maggie Hunter refused to return to the Club after covering one speech on assignment.[108]Nan Robertson's article on the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, was read aloud as anonymous by a professor, who then said, "'It will come as a surprise to you, perhaps, that the reporter is a girl,' he began... [G]asps; amazement in the ranks. 'She had used all her senses, not just her eyes, to convey the smell and feel of the stockyards. She chose a difficult subject, an offensive subject. Her imagery was strong enough to revolt you.'"[109]The New York Times hired Kathleen McLaughlin after ten years at the Chicago Tribune, where "[s]he did a series on maids, going out herself to apply for housekeeping jobs."[110]

Slogan

The New York Times has had one slogan. Since 1896, the newspaper's slogan has been "All the News That's Fit to Print." In 1896, Adolph Ochs held a competition to attempt to find a replacement slogan, offering a $100 prize for the best one. Entries included "News, Not Nausea"; "In One Word: Adequate"; "News Without Noise"; "Out Heralds The Herald, Informs The World, and Extinguishes The Sun"; "The Public Press is a Public Trust"; and the winner of the competition, "All the world's news, but not a school for scandal."[111][112][113][114] On May 10, 1960, Wright Patman asked the FTC to investigate whether The New York Times's slogan was misleading or false advertising. Within 10 days, the FTC responded that it was not.[115]

Again in 1996, a competition was held to find a new slogan, this time for NYTimes.com. Over 8,000 entries were submitted. Again however, "All the News That's Fit to Print," was found to be the best.[116]

As of 2013, the newspaper had six news bureaus in the New York region, 14 elsewhere in the United States, and 24 in other countries.[122]

In 2009, Russ Stanton, editor of the Los Angeles Times, a competitor, stated that the newsroom of The New York Times was twice the size of the Los Angeles Times, which had a newsroom of 600 at the time.[123]

To facilitate their reporters and to hasten an otherwise lengthy process of reviewing many documents during preparation for publication, their interactive news team has adapted OCR technology into a proprietary tool they entitle, Document Helper. It enables the team to accelerate the processing of documents that need to be reviewed. During March, 2019, they documented that this tool enabled them to process 900 documents in less than ten minutes in preparation for reporters to review the contents.[124]

Ochs-Sulzberger family

In 1896, Adolph Ochs bought The New York Times, a money-losing newspaper, and formed the New York Times Company. The Ochs-Sulzberger family, one of the United States' newspaper dynasties, has owned The New York Times ever since.[37] The publisher went public on January 14, 1969, trading at $42 a share on the American Stock Exchange.[125] After this, the family continued to exert control through its ownership of the vast majority of Class B voting shares. Class A shareholders are permitted restrictive voting rights while Class B shareholders are allowed open voting rights.

The Ochs-Sulzberger family trust controls roughly 88 percent of the company's class B shares. Any alteration to the dual-class structure must be ratified by six of eight directors who sit on the board of the Ochs-Sulzberger family trust. The Trust board members are Daniel H. Cohen, James M. Cohen, Lynn G. Dolnick, Susan W. Dryfoos, Michael Golden, Eric M. A. Lax, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., and Cathy J. Sulzberger.[126]

Turner Catledge, the top editor at The New York Times from 1952 to 1968, wanted to hide the ownership influence. Arthur Sulzberger routinely wrote memos to his editor, each containing suggestions, instructions, complaints, and orders. When Catledge would receive these memos he would erase the publisher's identity before passing them to his subordinates. Catledge thought that if he removed the publisher's name from the memos it would protect reporters from feeling pressured by the owner.[127]

Public editors

The position of public editor was established in 2003 to "investigate matters of journalistic integrity"; each public editor was to serve a two-year term.[128] The post "was established to receive reader complaints and question Times journalists on how they make decisions."[129] The impetus for the creation of the public editor position was the Jayson Blair affair. Public editors were: Daniel Okrent (2003–2005), Byron Calame (2005–2007), Clark Hoyt (2007–2010) (served an extra year), Arthur S. Brisbane (2010–2012), Margaret Sullivan (2012–2016) (served a four-year term), and Elizabeth Spayd (2016–2017). In 2017, the Times eliminated the position of public editor.[129][130]

Content

Style

When referring to people, The New York Times generally uses honorifics, rather than unadorned last names (except in the sports pages, Book Review and Magazine).[131]

The New York Times printed a display advertisement on its first page on January 6, 2009, breaking tradition at the paper.[132] The advertisement, for CBS, was in color and ran the entire width of the page.[133] The newspaper promised it would place first-page advertisements on only the lower half of the page.[132]

In August 2014, the Times decided to use the word "torture" to describe incidents in which interrogators "inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information." This was a shift from the paper's previous practice of describe such practices as "harsh" or "brutal" interrogations.[134]

The paper maintains a strict profanity policy. A 2007 review of a concert by punk band Fucked Up, for example, completely avoided mention of the group's name.[135] However, the Times has on occasion published unfiltered video content that includes profanity and slurs where it has determined that such video has news value.[136] During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, the Times did print the words "fuck" and "pussy," among others, when reporting on the vulgar statements made by Donald Trump in a 2005 recording. Times politics editor Carolyn Ryan said: "It's a rare thing for us to use this language in our stories, even in quotes, and we discussed it at length," ultimately deciding to publish it because of its news value and because "[t]o leave it out or simply describe it seemed awkward and less than forthright to us, especially given that we would be running a video that showed our readers exactly what was said."[137]

Products

Print newspaper

In the absence of a major headline, the day's most important story generally appears in the top-right column, on the main page. The typefaces used for the headlines are custom variations of Cheltenham. The running text is set at 8.7 pointImperial.[138][139]

Features: Includes Arts, Movies, Theater, Travel, NYC Guide, Food, Home & Garden, Fashion & Style, Crossword, The New York Times Book Review, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Sunday Review.

International print edition

The New York Times International Edition is a print version of the paper tailored for readers outside the United States. Formerly a joint venture with The Washington Post named The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times took full ownership of the paper in 2002 and has gradually integrated it more closely into its domestic operations.

Website

The New York Times began publishing daily on the World Wide Web on January 22, 1996, "offering readers around the world immediate access to most of the daily newspaper's contents."[144] The website had 555million pageviews in March 2005.[145] The domain nytimes.com attracted at least 146million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.[citation needed] In March 2009, The New York Times Web site ranked 59th by number of unique visitors, with over 20million unique visitors, making it the most visited newspaper site with more than twice the number of unique visitors as the next most popular site.[146] as of May 2009[update], nytimes.com produced 22 of the 50 most popular newspaper blogs.[147] NYTimes.com was ranked 118 in the world, and 32 in the U.S. by Alexa on June 4, 2017.[148]

In September 2005, the paper decided to begin subscription-based service for daily columns in a program known as TimesSelect, which encompassed many previously free columns. Until being discontinued two years later, TimesSelect cost $7.95 per month or $49.95 per year,[149] though it was free for print copy subscribers and university students and faculty.[150][151] To avoid this charge, bloggers often reposted TimesSelect material,[152] and at least one site once compiled links of reprinted material.[153] On September 17, 2007, The New York Times announced that it would stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight the following day, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.[154] In addition to opening almost the entire site to all readers, The New York Times news archives from 1987 to the present are available at no charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.[155][156] Access to the Premium Crosswords section continues to require either home delivery or a subscription for $6.95 per month or $39.95 per year. Times columnists including Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman had criticized TimesSelect,[157] with Friedman going so far as to say "I hate it. It pains me enormously because it's cut me off from a lot, a lot of people, especially because I have a lot of people reading me overseas, like in India ... I feel totally cut off from my audience."[158]

The New York Times was made available on the iPhone and iPod Touch in 2008,[159] and on the iPad mobile devices in 2010.[160] It was also the first newspaper to offer a video game as part of its editorial content, Food Import Folly by Persuasive Games.[161] In 2010, The New York Times editors collaborated with students and faculty from New York University's Studio 20 Journalism Masters program to launch and produce "The Local East Village", a hyperlocal blog designed to offer news "by, for and about the residents of the East Village".[162] That same year, reCAPTCHA helped to digitize old editions of The New York Times.[163]

In 2012, The New York Times introduced a Chinese-language news site, cn.nytimes.com, with content created by staff based in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong, though the server was placed outside of China to avoid censorship issues.[164] In March 2013, The New York Times and National Film Board of Canada announced a partnership titled A Short History of the Highrise, which will create four short documentaries for the Internet about life in highrise buildings as part of the NFB's Highrise project, utilizing images from the newspaper's photo archives for the first three films, and user-submitted images for the final film.[165] The third project in the series, "A Short History of the Highrise", won a Peabody Award in 2013.[166]

Falling print advertising revenue and projections of continued decline resulted in a "metered paywall" being instituted in 2011, regarded as modestly successful after garnering several hundred thousand subscriptions and about $100million in revenue as of March 2012[update].[167][168] As announced in March 2011, the paywall would charge frequent readers for access to its online content.[169] Readers would be able to access up to 20 articles each month without charge. (Although beginning in April 2012, the number of free-access articles was halved to just ten articles per month.) Any reader who wanted to access more would have to pay for a digital subscription. This plan would allow free access for occasional readers, but produce revenue from "heavy" readers. Digital subscriptions rates for four weeks range from $15 to $35 depending on the package selected, with periodic new subscriber promotions offering four-week all-digital access for as low as 99¢. Subscribers to the paper's print edition get full access without any additional fee. Some content, such as the front page and section fronts remained free, as well as the Top News page on mobile apps.[170] In January 2013, The New York Times'Public EditorMargaret M. Sullivan announced that for the first time in many decades, the paper generated more revenue through subscriptions than through advertising.[171] In December 2017, the number of free articles per month was reduced from ten to five, as the first change to the metered paywall since 2012.[168] An executive of The New York Times Company stated that the decision was motivated by "an all-time high" in the demand for journalism.[168]

The food section is supplemented on the web by properties for home cooks and for out-of-home dining. New York Times Cooking (cooking.nytimes.com; also available via iOS app) provides access to more than 17,000 recipes on file as of November 2016,[173] and availability of saving recipes from other sites around the web. The newspaper's restaurant search (nytimes.com/reviews/dining) allows online readers to search NYC area restaurants by cuisine, neighborhood, price, and reviewer rating. The New York Times has also published several cookbooks, including The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, published in late 2010.

As of December 2017, the New York Times has a total of 3.5 million paid subscriptions in both print and digital versions, and more than 130 million monthly readers, more than double its audience two years previously.[174]

In February 2018, The New York Times Company reported increased revenue from the digital-only subscriptions, adding 157,000 new subscribers to a total of 2.6 million digital-only subscribers. Digital advertising also saw growth during this period. At the same time, advertising for the print version of the journal fell.[175][176]

Mobile presence

The Times Reader is a digital version of The New York Times. It was created via a collaboration between the newspaper and Microsoft. Times Reader takes the principles of print journalism and applies them to the technique of online reporting. Times Reader uses a series of technologies developed by Microsoft and their Windows Presentation Foundation team. It was announced in Seattle in April 2006, by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., Bill Gates, and Tom Bodkin.[177] In 2009, the Times Reader 2.0 was rewritten in Adobe AIR.[178] In December 2013, the newspaper announced that the Times Reader app would be discontinued on January 6, 2014, urging readers of the app to instead begin using the subscription-only "Today's Paper" app.[179]

In 2008, The New York Times created an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch which allowed users to download articles to their mobile device enabling them to read the paper even when they were unable to receive a signal.[180] In April 2010, The New York Times announced it would begin publishing daily content through an iPad app.[181] As of October 2010[update], The New York Times iPad app is ad-supported and available for free without a paid subscription, but translated into a subscription-based model in 2011.[160]

Podcasts

The New York Times began producing podcasts in 2006. Among the early podcasts were Inside The Times and Inside The New York Times Book Review. Several of the Times podcasts were cancelled in 2012.[183][184] The Times returned to launching new podcasts in 2016, including Modern Love with WBUR.[185] On January 30, 2017, The New York Times launched a news podcast, The Daily.[186][187]

Spanish-language version

In February 2016, The New York Times launched a Spanish language edition, The New York Times en Español. The Spanish language version features increased coverage of news and events in Latin America and Spain. The expansion into Spanish language news content allows the newspaper to expand its audience into the Spanish speaking world and increase its revenue. The Spanish language version was seen as a way to compete with the established El País newspaper of Spain, which bills itself the "global newspaper in Spanish".[188] The Spanish version has a team of journalists in Mexico City as well as correspondents in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Miami, and Madrid, Spain.[189][190]

The site's initial success was interrupted in October that year following the publication of an investigative article[b] by David Barboza about the finances of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's family.[192] In retaliation for the article, the Chinese government blocked access to both nytimes.com and cn.nytimes.com inside the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Despite Chinese government interference, however, the Chinese-language operations have continued to develop, adding a second site, cn.nytstyle.com, iOS and Android apps and newsletters, all of which are accessible inside the PRC. The China operations also produce three print publications in Chinese. Traffic to cn.nytimes.com, meanwhile, has risen due to the widespread use of VPN technology in the PRC and to a growing Chinese audience outside mainland China.[193]New York Times articles are also available to users in China via the use of mirror websites, apps, domestic newspapers, and social media.[193][194] The Chinese platforms now represent one of The New York Times' top five digital markets globally. The editor-in-chief of the Chinese platforms is Ching-Ching Ni.[195]

TimesMachine

The TimesMachine is a web-based archive of scanned issues of The New York Times from 1851 through 2002.[196]

Unlike The New York Times online archive, the TimesMachine presents scanned images of the actual newspaper.[197] All non-advertising content can be displayed on a per-story basis in a separate PDF display page and saved for future reference.[198] The archive is available to New York Times subscribers, home delivery and/or digital.[196]

Interruptions

Because of holidays, no editions were printed on November 23, 1851; January 2, 1852; July 4, 1852; January 2, 1853; and January 1, 1854.[199]

Because of strikes, the regular edition of The New York Times was not printed during the following periods:[200]

September 17, 1965, to October 10, 1965. An international edition was printed, and a weekend edition replaced the Saturday and Sunday papers.

August 10, 1978, to November 5, 1978. A multi-union strike shut down the three major New York City newspapers. No editions of The New York Times were printed.[199] Two months into the strike, a parody of The New York Times called Not The New York Times was distributed in the city, with contributors such as Carl Bernstein, Christopher Cerf, Tony Hendra and George Plimpton.[201][202]

Editorial stance

The New York Times editorial page is often regarded as liberal.[203][204] In mid-2004, the newspaper's then public editor (ombudsman), Daniel Okrent, wrote that "the Op-Ed page editors do an evenhanded job of representing a range of views in the essays from outsiders they publish – but you need an awfully heavy counterweight to balance a page that also bears the work of seven opinionated columnists, only two of whom could be classified as conservative (and, even then, of the conservative subspecies that supports legalization of gay unions and, in the case of William Safire, opposes some central provisions of the Patriot Act)."[205]

Criticism and controversies

Failure to report famine in Ukraine

The New York Times was criticized for the work of reporter Walter Duranty, who served as its Moscow bureau chief from 1922 through 1936. Duranty wrote a series of stories in 1931 on the Soviet Union and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work at that time; however, he has been criticized for his denial of widespread famine, most particularly the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s.[212][213][214][215] In 2003, after the Pulitzer Board began a renewed inquiry, the Times hired Mark von Hagen, professor of Russian history at Columbia University, to review Duranty's work. Von Hagen found Duranty's reports to be unbalanced and uncritical, and that they far too often gave voice to Stalinistpropaganda. In comments to the press he stated, "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away."[216]

World War II

On November 14, 2001, in The New York Times' 150th anniversary issue, former executive editor Max Frankel wrote that before and during World War II, the Times had maintained a consistent policy to minimize reports on the Holocaust in their news pages.[217]Laurel Leff, associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, concluded that the newspaper had downplayed the Third Reich targeting of Jews for genocide. Her 2005 book Buried by the Times documents the paper's tendency before, during and after World War II to place deep inside its daily editions the news stories about the ongoing persecution and extermination of Jews, while obscuring in those stories the special impact of the Nazis' crimes on Jews in particular. Leff attributes this dearth in part to the complex personal and political views of the newspaper's Jewish publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, concerning Jewishness, antisemitism, and Zionism.[218]

Iraq War

The Times supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[221] On May 26, 2004, more than a year after the war started, the newspaper asserted that some of its articles had not been as rigorous as they should have been, and were insufficiently qualified, frequently overly dependent upon information from Iraqi exiles desiring regime change.[222] Reporter Judith Miller retired after criticisms that her reporting of the lead-up to the Iraq War was factually inaccurate and overly favorable to the George W. Bush administration's position, for which The New York Times later apologized.[223][224] One of Miller's prime sources was Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate who returned to Iraq after the U.S. invasion and held a number of governmental positions culminating in acting oil minister and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006.[225][226][227][228]

Jayson Blair plagiarism

In May 2003, The New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was forced to resign from the newspaper after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories. Some critics contended that African-American Blair's race was a major factor in his hiring and in The New York Times' initial reluctance to fire him.[229]

Duke University lacrosse case

The newspaper was criticized for largely reporting the prosecutors' version of events in the 2006 Duke lacrosse case.[230][231] Suzanne Smalley of Newsweek criticized the newspaper for its "credulous"[232] coverage of the charges of rape against Duke University lacrosse players. Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson, in their book Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, write: "at the head of the guilt-presuming pack, The New York Times vied in a race to the journalistic bottom with trash-TV talk shows."[231]

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

A 2003 study in The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics concluded that The New York Times reporting was more favorable to Israelis than to Palestinians.[233] A 2002 study published in the journal Journalism examined Middle East coverage of the Second Intifada over a one-month period in the Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune. The study authors said that the Times was "the most slanted in a pro-Israeli direction" with a bias "reflected ... in its use of headlines, photographs, graphics, sourcing practices and lead paragraphs."[234]

Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposal to write an article for the paper on grounds of lack of objectivity. A piece in which Thomas Friedman commented that praise awarded to Netanyahu during a speech at congress was "paid for by the Israel lobby" elicited an apology and clarification from its writer.[239]

The New York Times' public editor Clark Hoyt concluded in his January 10, 2009, column, "Though the most vociferous supporters of Israel and the Palestinians do not agree, I think The New York Times, largely barred from the battlefield and reporting amid the chaos of war, has tried its best to do a fair, balanced and complete job— and has largely succeeded."[240]

M.I.A. quotes out of context

In February 2009, a Village Voice music blogger accused the newspaper of using "chintzy, ad-hominem allegations" in an article on British Tamil music artist M.I.A. concerning her activism against the Sinhala-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka.[241][242] M.I.A. criticized the paper in January 2010 after a travel piece rated post-conflict Sri Lanka the "#1 place to go in 2010".[243][244] In June 2010, The New York Times Magazine published a correction on its cover article of M.I.A., acknowledging that the interview conducted by current W editor and then-Times Magazine contributor Lynn Hirschberg contained a recontextualization of two quotes.[245][246] In response to the piece, M.I.A. broadcast Hirschberg's phone number and secret audio recordings from the interview via her Twitter and website.[247][248]

Former The New York Times executive editor Bill Keller decided not to report the piece after being pressured by the Bush administration and being advised not to do so by New York Times Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman. Keller explained the silence's rationale in an interview with the newspaper in 2013, stating "Three years after 9/11, we, as a country, were still under the influence of that trauma, and we, as a newspaper, were not immune".[251]

In 2014, PBS Frontline interviewed Risen and Lichtblau, who said that the newspaper's plan was to not publish the story at all. "The editors were furious at me", Risen said to the program. "They thought I was being insubordinate." Risen wrote a book about the mass surveillance revelations after The New York Times declined the piece's publication, and only released it after Risen told them that he would publish the book. Another reporter told NPR that the newspaper "avoided disaster" by ultimately publishing the story.[252]

Irish student controversy

On June 16, 2015, The New York Times published an article reporting the deaths of six Irish students staying in Berkeley, California when the balcony they were standing on collapsed, the paper's story insinuating that they were to blame for the collapse. The paper stated that the behavior of Irish students coming to the U.S. on J1 visas was an "embarrassment to Ireland".[253] The Irish Taoiseach and former President of Ireland criticized the newspaper for "being insensitive and inaccurate" in its handling of the story.[254]

Nail salon series

In May 2015, a New York Times exposé by Sarah Maslin Nir on the working conditions of manicurists in New York City and elsewhere[255] and the health hazards to which they are exposed[256] attracted wide attention, resulting in emergency workplace enforcement actions by New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo.[257] In July 2015, the story's claims of widespread illegally low wages were challenged by former New York Times reporter Richard Bernstein, in the New York Review of Books. Bernstein, whose wife owns two nail salons, asserted that such illegally low wages were inconsistent with his personal experience, and were not evidenced by ads in the Chinese-language papers cited by the story.[258]The New York Times editorial staff subsequently answered Bernstein's criticisms with examples of several published ads and stating that his response was industry advocacy.[259] The independent NYT Public Editor also reported that she had previously corresponded with Bernstein and looked into his complaints, and expressed her belief that the story's reporting was sound.[260]

In September and October 2015, nail salon owners and workers protested at The New York Times offices several times, in response to the story and the ensuing New York State crackdown.[261][262] In October 2015, Reason magazine published a three part re-reporting of the story by Jim Epstein, charging that the series was filled with misquotes and factual errors respecting both its claims of illegally low wages and health hazards. Epstein additionally argued that The New York Times had mistranslated the ads cited in its answer to Bernstein, and that those ads actually validated Bernstein's argument.[263][264][265] In November 2015, The New York Times' public editor concluded that the exposé's "findings, and the language used to express them, should have been dialed back — in some instances substantially" and recommended that "The Times write further follow-up stories, including some that re-examine its original findings and that take on the criticism from salon owners and others — not defensively but with an open mind."[266]

Hiring practices

In April 2016, two black female employees in their sixties filed a federal class action lawsuit against The New York Times Company CEO Mark Thompson and chief revenue officer Meredith Levien, claiming age, gender, and racial discrimination. The plaintiffs claimed that the Times advertising department favored younger white employees over older black employees in making firing and promotion decisions.[268][269] The Times said that the suit was "entirely without merit" and was "a series of recycled, scurrilous and unjustified attacks."[269]

Accusations of bias

The New York Timespublic editor (ombudsman) Elizabeth Spayd wrote in 2016 that "Conservatives and even many moderates, see in The Times a blue-state worldview" and accuse it of harboring a liberal bias. Spayd did not analyze the substance of the claim, but did opine that the Times is "part of a fracturing media environment that reflects a fractured country. That in turn leads liberals and conservatives toward separate news sources."[270]Times executive editor Dean Baquet stated that he does not believe coverage has a liberal bias, but that: "We have to be really careful that people feel like they can see themselves in The New York Times. I want us to be perceived as fair and honest to the world, not just a segment of it. It's a really difficult goal. Do we pull it off all the time? No."[270]

Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote in 2012: "When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper's many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times."[271]

In mid-2004, the newspaper's then-public editor Daniel Okrent, wrote an opinion piece in which he said that The New York Times did have a liberal bias in news coverage of certain social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He stated that this bias reflected the paper's cosmopolitanism, which arose naturally from its roots as a hometown paper of New York City.[205] He wrote, "if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world."[205] Okrent wrote that the Time's Arts & Leisure; the Sunday Times Magazine, and Culture coverage trend to the left.[272]

Donald Trump has frequently criticized The New York Times on his Twitter account before and during his presidency; since November 2015, Trump has referred to the Times as "the failing New York Times" in a series of tweets.[273] Despite Trump's criticism, New York Times editor Mark Thompson noted that the paper had enjoyed soaring digital readership, with the fourth quarter of 2016 seeing the highest number of new digital subscribers to the newspaper since 2011.[274][275][276]

Critic Matt Taibbi accused The New York Times of favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the paper's news coverage of the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries.[277] Responding to the complaints of many readers, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote that "The Times has not ignored Mr. Sanders's campaign, but it hasn't always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of that is focused on the candidate's age, appearance and style, rather than what he has to say."[278]Times senior editor Carolyn Ryan defended both the volume of New York Times coverage (noting that Sanders had received about the same amount of article coverage as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio) and its tone.[279]

Reputation

The Times has developed a national and international "reputation for thoroughness" over time.[280] Among journalists, the paper is held in high regard; a 1999 survey of newspaper editors conducted by the Columbia Journalism Review found that the Times was the "best" American paper, ahead of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.[281] The Times also was ranked #1 in a 2011 "quality" ranking of U.S. newspapers by Daniel de Vise of The Washington Post; the objective ranking took into account the number of recent Pulitzer Prizes won, circulation, and perceived Web site quality.[281] A 2012 report in WNYC called the Times "the most respected newspaper in the world."[282]Noam Chomsky, co-author of Manufacturing Consent, said that the New York Times was the first thing he looked at in the morning. "Despite all its flaws—and they're real—it still has the broadest, the most comprehensive coverage of I think any newspaper in the world.[283]

Nevertheless, like many other U.S. media sources, the Times had suffered from a decline in public perceptions of credibility in the U.S. from 2004 to 2012.[284] A Pew Research Center survey in 2012 asked respondents about their views on credibility of various news organizations. Among respondents who gave a rating, 49% said that they believed "all or most" of the Times's reporting, while 50% disagreed. A large percentage (19%) of respondents were unable to rate believability. The Times's score was comparable to that of USA Today.[284] Media analyst Brooke Gladstone of WNYC's On the Media, writing for The New York Times, says that the decline in U.S. public trust of the mass media can be explained (1) by the rise of the polarized Internet-driven news; (2) by a decline in trust in U.S. institutions more generally; and (3) by the fact that "Americans say they want accuracy and impartiality, but the polls suggest that, actually, most of us are seeking affirmation."[285]

References

Notes

^Seven different newspapers have been published under The New York Times name, with the earliest being published by a David Longworth and Nicholas Van Riper in 1813, but they all died out within a few years.[24]

^Adler, John with Draper Hill (2008). Doomed by Cartoon: How Cartoonist Thomas Nast and the New York Times Brought Down Boss Tweed and His Ring of Thieves. Garden City, NY: Morgan James Publishing. ISBN978-1-60037-443-2.

^Talese, Gay (2007). The kingdom and the power : behind the scenes at The New York times : the institution that influences the world (Random House trade paperback ed.). New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. p. 23. ISBN9780812977684. OCLC74492264.

^"The Times and Iraq: A Sample of the Coverage". New York Times. Retrieved May 21, 2017. "sampling of articles published by The Times about the decisions that led the United States into the war in Iraq, and especially the issue of Iraq's weapons"

^Dunlap, David W. (November 14, 2001). "150th Anniversary: 1851–2001; Six Buildings That Share One Story". The New York Times. Retrieved October 10, 2008. Surely the most remarkable of these survivors is 113 Nassau Street, where the New-York Daily Times was born in 1851.... After three years at 113 Nassau Street and four years at 138 Nassau Street, The New York Times moved to a five-story Romanesque headquarters at 41 Park Row, designed by Thomas R. Jackson. For the first time, a New York newspaper occupied a structure built for its own use.

^Barron, James (April 8, 2004). "100 Years Ago, an Intersection's New Name: Times Square"] The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 24, 2015.

^Chomsky, Daniel(2006) "'An Interested Reader': Measuring Ownership Control at the New York Times", Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23(1): 1–18

^"Margaret Sullivan". The New York Times. September 24, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014. Margaret Sullivan is the fifth public editor appointed by The New York Times. ... The public editor's office also handles questions and comments from readers and investigates matters of journalistic integrity. The public editor works independently, outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper; her opinions are her own.

^Matt Viser (September 2003). "Attempted Objectivity: An Analysis of the New York Times and Ha'aretz and their Portrayals of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict". The International Journal of Press/Politics. 8 (4): 114–120. doi:10.1177/1081180X03256999. This study explores the biases, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, by looking at quantitative indicators of news coverage in the New York Times and Ha'aretz. Several time periods were examined (1987–88, 2000–01, and post-September 11, 2001), using multiple indicators. By these measures, the New York Times is more favorable toward the Israelis than the Palestinians, and the partiality has become more pronounced with time.

^Zelizer, Barbie; Park, David; Gudelunas, David (December 2002). "How Bias Shapes the News: Challenging the New York Times' Status as a Newspaper of Record on the Middle East". Journalism. 3 (3): 283–307. doi:10.1177/146488490200300305.